Hydrogen Kits (run your car on water) - Really?

Ok so I put a thread up a while back asking about LPG and had allot of good feedback, so I decided to put this one up.

Don't know if you've seen them advertised but basically a DIY kit that seperates Hydrogen from water and pumps it into your engine. With reported increases of 10mpg - 20mpg. You can buy one of these electrolysers from places like Ebay for £65 and yes ebay dont usually sell the best of products as I've read with MAFS etc.

However is there anyone out there who has any idea whether these things actually work, or maybe you have got one fitted all ready or have you tried and the car blew up. Or are you engineeringly minded enough to know whether the engine would need major modifications or can the ECU sense and adjust as necessary.

To me as a marine engineer (know little about cars) I am guessing the calorific value is higher of hydrogen than petrol so when mixed into petrol it is going to burn hotter and produce more energy, so not as much petrol is needed hence the better MPG. Maybe act like nitrous does to a car but in a smaller scale.

But burning hotter & piston rings?? what about the timing surely hydrogen is more volatile so the detonations will happen earlier? Anyway I have thrown a couple of ideas and babbled on a bit what do you think people brilliant invention or just a farce.

I think it is a fantastic idea in theory and on paper....

Practice.... I am not so sure.

Yeah I agree, it is still a relatively new idea not very well tested.

But hell of a temptation with fuel prices rising as fast as they are

It may be worth experimenting on an engine out of a car, seeing how it runs, analysing and testing and such like.

Yeah I was thinking the same sort of thing getting a fuel injected banger stick the kit on it and see what happened

I bet you need to be a scientist to get it to work, otherwise everyone would be doing it right now..

Sorry if that sounds a bit negative.

You'd better let the government know, if your succesful they will lose all their hard earnt and well deserved taxes from the fuel tax.

It will be your fault if they transfer the tax onto drinking water (and rain knowing these thieving bloodsuckers)

I'll know where to come looking.....

They will use sattelite tracking to charge you per mile. They know that fuel tax won't last forever, that is why they want us to go down that route.

A normal engine runs just fine on hydrogen, no modifications whatsoever are required . . . that's the easy bit.

You need a lot of hydrogen . . .

I havn't seen the kits you mention, but I assume they are what 'make' the hydrogen. I'm gonna guess they probably take a week to fill an egg cup.

Hydrogen fuel cells are either ridiculously expensive or ridiculously inefficient.

Saw one of these kits tested on myth busters the kits cant produce enough hydrogen for the engine to even tick over.

The laws on thermodynamics dictate that the energy required to generate the hydrogen must be equal to or greater than the energy released by burning it. In practice the efficiency is pretty poor. So on-board electrolysis simply cannot work. The extra load on the alternator is greater than the extra power from the hydrogen. Result is a net loss of available power.

That's what I was thinking....

Originally Posted by neileg

The laws on thermodynamics dictate that the energy required to generate the hydrogen must be equal to or greater than the energy released by burning it. In practice the efficiency is pretty poor. So on-board electrolysis simply cannot work. The extra load on the alternator is greater than the extra power from the hydrogen. Result is a net loss of available power.

Very intersting in deed yes I can see how that would effect it.

I dont know if this makes any difference to the idea, these things run along side your fuel system and are quite small, they just put hydrogen into the air induction, so does the fact that its smaller mean that it will be less load on the alternator to split it.

If so can a small amount of hydrogen increase fuel efficiency when running along side the normal fuel system

Originally Posted by Spiff

A normal engine runs just fine on hydrogen, no modifications whatsoever are required . . . that's the easy bit.

You need a lot of hydrogen . . .

I havn't seen the kits you mention, but I assume they are what 'make' the hydrogen. I'm gonna guess they probably take a week to fill an egg cup.

Hydrogen fuel cells are either ridiculously expensive or ridiculously inefficient.

These things run along side your normal fuel system just puts hydrogen into the air induction, so does this increase efficiency, I'm kind of think the same kind of efect that the Shell V Power petrol is supposed to have (yet they charge u more for it), burns cleaner, higher octane level, same effect as enriching the air with hydrogen??

Wow what an invention. I wonder why Ford, GM, Alfa, VAG have not installed it yet.... Probably because its a pile of poop.

Suggest you stick to tried and tested methods IE LPG conversions.

File this in the same bin as the ebay resistors for giving you a million billion HP extra, the electric supercharger for huge boost values and these waterless wash products for cleaning your car with.


On a serious note I'm pretty sure a program on discovery called Myth busters have featured this kit and basically said that its so inefficient its not worth it. Infact they tested a whole host of fuel saving devices and found the only good one was chip fat for your derv.

astraaaaaaaaaaman

its a well known con, and no it doesnt work. use google.

the main problem is that you use more engergy than you save, so it actually reduces your mpg. plenty of independant tests have shown that to be true.

The idea of a hydrogen economy is an interesting one.

A pretty good explanation can be found here: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/hydrogen-economy.htm

Nitrous is not a fuel - it is a "more concentated" source of additional oxygen than air that allows more fuel to be burnt.

The whole idea is naff, as neileg has most succinctly stated..

Yeah I know nitrous is not a fuel and it adds more oxygen, I belive the term is stochiometric, well at least thats what it trys to achieve where you have the exact number of molecules to use the fuel, a complete burn.

So if it is naf surely these companies are breaking the law by advertising a false product why aren't they shut down. I don't understand allot about electrolysis and I get the feeling it requires a hell of allot of energy to split the water and get a small amount of hydrogen. It is interesting to get this sort of debate going though gets people thinking outside the box and thinking of ideas to beat the fuel companies who every year report breaking profits in the millions if not billions yet the barrel still goes up, they say they invest this in new enviromantally ideas when the hydrogen idea has been around for years all they want to do is suck every last penny from every last drop of oil, that's the real con

"Totally Busted" on Mythbusters.

Hydrogen is also very explosive (see Zeppelin accident in New York before WW2) . To produce enough hydrogen to run an Otto engine will take enormous amounts of electricity, Norway and Iceland are producing Hydrogen because they have cheap water powered electricity stations. We are condemned to use oil as long as it is available (50 years ?)

Originally Posted by rarebear

We are condemned to use oil as long as it is available (50 years ?)

True, but it is still ruinously expensive and a dying commodity. However, the mighty dollar will always win and the alternative free technologies are largely overlooked . . .

Hydrogen fuel cells are an interesting technology albeit very nascent currently, but heat exchange engines (Stirling, thermoelectric, radio isotope etc) are all out there. But what oil company is ever going to let that technology mature and be released into the public domain?

Never forget the cigarette company who, by a very expensive process, invented a provably safe cigarette that offered no risk of cancer . . . where is that now? The company was bought out and buried by Philip Morris.